Tyler's Bad Dream
by Bella Danvers
Summary: Grief follows you like a shadow.
1. Chapter 1

"Ty, breakfast!" Rosalind's voice floated up the stairs just like every other Sunday. Then it would be pancakes, or French toast and juice, then church. Tyler liked this routine. He didn't realize it, but he did. It was family tradition. They'd always done it this way, sometimes with the addition of Reid.

Tyler rolled out of bed and padded into the bathroom, taking a quick shower and giving himself a minute to let the water ease his sore muscles. Swimming had been brutal lately, and his shoulders and back were wound tighter than violin strings.

He dressed casually, planning on changing into his suit after breakfast. He'd learned at the tender age of five the stigmatism attached to showing up to church in Ipswich with a spot of syrup on your collar. The pastor still glared severely at him when he walked in sometimes.

Tyler bounded down the stairs in that carefree way teenage boys do that makes them sound like stampeding elephants, heedless of the noise. Everyone else should be up by now, or at least in the process of waking. Rosalind was in the kitchen, obviously, and Glenn was probably throwing himself under the harsh spray of his morning shower. Unlike Tyler, who had been trained by years of getting up for early morning swim practices, Glenn was still in the habit of sleeping until noon most days and had trouble prying his eyes open even with an alarm clock, cell phone alarm, and the help of his wife. You could do that when you were a billionaire, Tyler guessed, but it had gotten harder as he'd aged. Sometimes he Used to even get out of bed because his joints were sore from age, but that would only make it worse the next day, so he'd stopped.

"Good morning, Mom." Tyler greeted her, slipping onto one of the three barstool behind the counter and for a moment feeling like Goldilocks and the three bears. This porridge is too hot, this porridge is too cold, but this porridge is just right.

"Morning, honey. Is Reid coming to church with us today?" She asked, ladling pancake batter onto her electric griddle.

"Not that I know of. I think he wanted to sleep in." Tyler answered, grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl and taking a generous bite. God, he was starving! Swimmer metabolism... lets you eat anything and burn it off, but damn, do you have to eat a lot of it all the time to feel full.

"Ty, can you grab the syrup?" Rosalind asked, focused on her pancakes.

"Yeah, sure." Tyler got up, still chomping his apple. It was small and gone in a few bites, but it was enough to hold him over until pancakes. He grabbed the syrup from their pantry, a big stone affair crafted over a hundred years ago that was always cold and always smelled, strangely, of peppermint.

"Got it." He announced, setting it on the counter where, in a few minutes, Rosalind would set the first batch then move on the second.

"Thanks, baby." Rosalind smiled, her eyes crinkling into crow's feet. She had been very pretty in her youth, a slim beauty with long dark hair and eyes so brown they were almost black. It had been with some real amazement that Tyler had been born with his father's blue eyes. Now, almost eighteen years after that birth, she was still slim and fit with dyed brown hair to cover the tiny grays that had started popping up a few years before. Her face was different than the one in pictures Tyler had seen, a little thinner with laugh lines around her eyes and mouth. She might not have asked to marry into a covenant of silence, but she'd had a good life and, Tyler thought, she wouldn't change a thing.

"Penny for your thoughts?" She asked him as she flipped deftly.

"Just thinking about school." Tyler responded, pouring himself a tall glass of milk and returning to his barstool.

"Oh, he should be up by now. We're going to be late." Rosalind complained, checking her wall clock above the stove. "I woke him up an hour ago! He sat up, said 'I love you, Rosy. And Ty.' And laid back down." Tyler chuckled at his mother's rumbly impression of his father's deep timbre.

"I'll go get him. Probably didn't hear the alarm again." Tyler sighed, knowing the pancakes were almost done. His stomach growled as he tumbled lightly up the steps in his graceful teenage boy way. He reached the top and went straight, following the hallway to his parents' room and knocking lightly before sticking his head in. Sure enough, Glenn Simms's figure lay tucked into his king-sized bed, the blankets pulled tightly around him.

"Wake up, old man." Tyler called, striding in and shaking his father.

Glenn didn't respond.

Tyler shook him again, dread sliding down and beginning to pool in his stomach like acid.

"Dad?" He asked, shaking him again. He felt his father's cheek with the back of his hand. It was cold. He checked for a pulse, his own hammering in his head. He lifted Glenn's eyelid.

Tyler's pool of dread turned into a snake, angry and thrashing, spreading its venom through his entire system.

"DAD!" Tyler bellowed this time, because this just can't possible. Glenn Simms can't be dead. His pulse has to be there, just underneath the thin skin of his neck, his eyelids have to dilate when Tyler lifts them, he HAS to sit up now and day "Surprise! Wasn't that a great joke, Ty? I got you." He has to be just pretending, like he used to pretend to sleep on Christmas morning when Tyler would come in and jump on this same bed and beg to open presents.

This is what Tyler told himself, but the brain of his new pet snake said differently. Deep down it knew, and since it was a part of him, Tyler knew, too.

He wasn't crying when Rosalind came running in, her high heels for church clicking out a panicked tattoo against their hardwood floors. He didn't cry when she gasped, skittering toward them and shaking her husband only to find out what Tyler's dread-snake already knew. Her tears started immediately, big gasping sobs with wails thrown in that made Tyler, on a clinical level, very sad. But nothing could touch him now, because this obviously wasn't real.

"Call 911, Ty. He may still be okay." Rosalind commanded, controlling her sobs almost immediately but sounding less than hopeful. She had to be strong for Tyler now.

Tyler did as she asked, mechanically.

"911 Emergency, how can I help you?"

"My dad… he's not breathing. And he doesn't have a pulse. But he's okay. He's faking it." Tyler told the woman on the line.

"Where are you, son?" She asked, her voice far more grave, almost like she was talking to someone stupid who she needed to be very clear and serious with. Like they didn't KNOW what their emergency was or something. Tyler almost scoffed at her, but he told her the address, and she said someone was on their way.

"Baby, can you take the pancakes off the griddle? They're burning." Rosalind asked, already regaining control over herself.

"Okay. I'll wait for the paramedics. Everything'll be fine, Mom." Tyler promised, leaving the room confidently. If he wasn't looking at his father, it was easier. He was playing a joke on them. That was all.

Tyler trampled down the stairs again, coughing at the smoke from the burning food. He made his way into the kitchen, right in front of the griddle, grabbed the spatula to scrape the charred remains into the trash, and stopped. He sent a glance at the pancake stack on the counter, then looked back at the burned ones.

This porridge is too cold. This porridge is too hot. And now, no porridge would ever be just right again.

The tears came, and the realization. His father was dead.

* * *

Tyler woke up from the dream with tears leaking out of the edges of his eyes. He wiped them away with a hurried motion meant to look like he was wiping sleep from them. He was a twenty-one year old man now. No need to wake up crying about anything. But of course, Reid knew him better than he knew himself.

"The dad dream?" Tyler heard him ask quietly from the other half of their dorm room.

"Yeah." Tyler's voice came out steady, and for that he was thankful.

"Been a long time since the last one." Reid commented. Tyler stayed on his side the way he'd woken up, his back to Reid, his face to the wall.

"Yeah." Tyler said again, wiping the tears away with more force than necessary.

"It's okay to cry, Ty. He was your dad." Reid said in a soft, gentle voice.

Tyler hated that voice. He never wanted to hear Reid use that voice again in his life. It made him feel like an invalid, or a three year old girl with a scuffed knee. It made him feel weak and pathetic and it made him hate his father a little bit, too. For dying, for coming back to haunt him. For leaving shoes too big for poor Goldi-Tyler to fill.

"It's okay to miss him. I miss him, too." Reid continued. Tyler wanted to pull his own hair out. It felt like his throat was closing up. "Heart attacks take lots of people. I bet there's a support group–"

"No. No fucking support group. I'm fine. It's just a dream that comes every now and then. I'm fine."


	2. Chapter 2

Tyler pulled his jacket tighter to him, glaring up at the spitting sky. Fucking New England. Fucking weather. Fucking fuck. He climbed the steps to his class with unnecessary intensity, contemplating how every fiber of his being went against it. Stupid fucking class.

He pushed roughly against the door into the building, his glare sweeping across the hallway mercilessly. Everyone looked miserable here. What did they have to be miserable about? Tyler hated them, too. He bumped against a girl walking through the hallway, tucking notes away into a notebook. She winced at the contact, but Tyler ignored her, not even apologizing. Not today. Today, the world owed him for that stupid dream waking him up at four in the morning.

"Watch it, ass hole!" The girl muttered. Tyler's jaw flexed, but he kept going holding on to his tenuous temper. Since Glenn's death his fuse had been significantly shorter, more so after ascending.

He somehow managed to make it through class, not paying any attention but also not ripping anyone to shreds. He counted that as a victory, all things considered.

He made it all the way to lunch without an outburst, but when the middle-aged white woman pulled out the other chair at his table and slid into it with a concerned look in her eye, Tyler knew nothing good could possibly come from the day.

"Hi, Tyler. My name's Mary Klein. I'm one of the councilors here, and I just wanted to check up on you, see how you're doing with everything." Her forehead crinkled above her nose in a concerned expression meant to look like she was really listening. Tyler hated her, too. He felt himself flushing with embarrassment and anger.

"I'm fine." He ground out, glaring stoically at the clunky, ugly turquoise necklace lying on her chest, unable to look her in the eye.

"Tyler, people deal with loss differently, but that doesn't mean –" He interrupted her as she gently reached a hand across the table to take one of his.

"I don't need a shrink. I don't need help. I'm fine. Don't you get that? I'M. FINE." He stood abruptly, feeling the siren call of his powers, aching to Use to show this woman that Tyler Simms could deal with anything, could do anything he wanted and that her stupid forehead wrinkle meant nothing to him.

"That's anger. It's normal." He didn't realize he'd stood up until he noticed he was looking down on her where she sat calmly, her hands folded gracefully in her lap.

"Stop SHRINKING me! I'm not a fucking experiment! Leave me ALONE!" He stormed out, not even bothering to clean up his tray or grab his bag. Reid could give it back to him later since it seemed he was so close with that woman to tell her all of his secrets.

It was cold outside, but Tyler didn't feel it. His blood pumped through his veins, singing in a chorus of rage. What right did Reid have to talk to that woman about him? His father's death was private, and it was no one's business how or if he was dealing with it. It was years ago. He was over it.

A few minutes later, after running through all these thoughts (and a few more about how it would be to approach Reid about the situation, most of them involving a baseball bat to the face), Tyler's anger finally slowed to a trickle and he stopped, sinking down on a campus bench and holding his head in his hands. How did this happen? How did he become the guy his friends had to call a shrink on?

I have to do better. Tyler thought, I have to show them I'm okay.

Tyler's phone went off, vibrating quietly against in his pocket. He fished it out, turning off the alarm. Swim practice.

Tyler stood and stretched. Swimming would be good. It would let him work out some of his frustrations, clear his mind a little bit. Swimming had that effect on him. No matter how upset he was diving in, by the end of the work out he was tired enough and had had enough time to think that problems seemed manageable and a good night's sleep inevitable.

* * *

Tyler cried in the shower. He was completely silent, and it didn't interfere or slow him down in getting cleaned up, but somehow Reid seemed to know, judging by the looks he kept shooting his silent brother on the short walk back to their room.

"Dude, you okay?" He asked cautiously as Tyler stuck his key in the door. Tyler froze, his shoulders tensing.

"Why wouldn't I be? Your shrink should have made me all better, shouldn't she have?" Tyler shot back viciously. Reid's eyebrows shot up.

"What?" He asked, looking genuinely surprised.

"You know, Mary King or whatever." Tyler glared, readjusting his swimming bag angrily, jimmying his keys in the lock with more force than strictly necessary.

"Dude, I have no idea what you're talking about." Reid said, baffled.

"Don't even lie." Tyler's disgust was evident as he banged open the door. "It's none of your fucking business how I deal with shit in my life. Just butt the fuck out!"

"Dude, I didn't DO anything. I have no idea what you're talking about!" Reid defended himself, his own notorious temper flaring up.

"Don't fucking stand there and lie to my fucking face!" Tyler shouted, throwing his bag savagely across the room where it hit his desk, sending a rain of pens and papers down to the floor. It was then that Tyler finally brought his furious black gaze up to Reid's only to see his brother's own anger, but no guilt, and Reid wasn't that good of a liar.

"I'm not fucking lying, you stupid dick!" Reid shouted back, eyes glazing black as he sent a textbook flying at Tyler's head. Tyler blocked it with his own textbook, then they were fighting, an all-out war that left them panting with the effort. It only took a minute or two for their phones to start buzzing with calls from Caleb and Pogue.

"Stop. Just stop." Reid commanded, reaching for his phone without looking, his eyes still black as he answered. "Yeah, Caleb, I'm using! Ty is too. If I weren't using he'd have killed me."

Tyler glared at him, letting his own voice go to voicemail. Fuck Pogue.

"Caleb, I'll stop when he does." Reid said into the phone, his oily black eyes still on Tyler. He gave it another moment, then let his usual baby blues shine cautiously through. "Ty, you gonna try to kill me again?"

Tyler ignored him, brushing past and out of the room, letting the Power slip away. Reid could deal with Caleb's guilt trip by himself. Tyler was done.

He pulled the collar of his coat up and headed out, walking wherever his feet took him, ignoring the drizzling rain. Eventually he ended up in the Hummer, then somehow found himself sitting at the edge of a lake, perched on an enormous rock and watching the fog cling to the water's surface, the entire scene bathed in the obscured glow of the moon. It was still and quiet, and Tyler laid back against the cool rock face, completely drained.

It was peaceful to lay back on the cold stone, his face up and open to the rain and fog, vaguely watching for the concealed moon and not thinking. Not feeling. Now that he was finally alone, things were a little easier to deal with. He could breathe a little bit, outside of school and Reid's coddling and Caleb's bullshit lectures.

Tyler was officially done.


End file.
